1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computer software and, more specifically to aids in navigating hypertext in a distributed computing environment.
2. Description of Related Art
The “Internet” is a worldwide network of computers. Today, the Internet is made up of more than 65 million computers in more than 100 countries covering commercial, academic and government endeavors. Originally developed for the U.S. military, the Internet became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users had access to unpublished data and journals on a huge variety of subjects. Today, the Internet has become commercialized into a worldwide information highway, providing information on every subject known to humankind.
The Internet's surge in growth in the latter half of the 1990s was twofold. As the major online services (AOL, CompuServe, etc.) connected to the Internet for e-mail exchange, the Internet began to function as a central gateway. A member of one service could finally send mail to a member of another. The Internet glued the world together for electronic mail, and today, the Internet mail protocol is the world standard.
Secondly, with the advent of graphics-based Web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, and soon after, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the World Wide Web took off. The Web became easily available to users with PCs and Macs rather than only scientists and hackers at UNIX workstations. Delphi was the first proprietary online service to offer Web access, and all the rest followed. At the same time, new Internet service providers rose out of the woodwork to offer access to individuals and companies. As a result, the Web has grown exponentially providing an information exchange of unprecedented proportion. The Web has also become “the” storehouse for drivers, updates and demos that are downloaded via the browser.
Enterprise or company private intranets have also developed right along with the development of the Internet. These internal company intranets or networks often function much the same was the Internet does and provide employees with a mechanism for sharing information. However, one problem common to both the Internet and private intranet is the problem of efficiently locating relevant information from the mass of information available.
It is fairly common now for web sites to contain hyperlinks to other web sites enabling a user to navigate from one web site to the next using hyperlinks to take the user to information the user believes will be useful. For enterprises, there are benefits of relying on the enterprise's intranet to organize and deliver content to knowledge workers occasionally using hyperlinks to connect various documents. Clearly, it is cheaper and more easily updated than old-fashioned paper manuals. But departing from the linear structure of paper documents has sometimes left readers confused and frustrated.
The many hyperlinks which branch from a web page may seem like a boon at first, but workers or other users soon realize that they can't quickly judge which hyperlinks to follow to retrieve reference material for their job role within an enterprise or to retrieve material of interest for the lay person browsing the Internet. Consequently, they waste time following links that do not help them. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system, method, and computer program product that provided assistance to users in navigating an intranet or the Internet that would allow the user to more efficiently locate relevant documents.